We, written between 1920 and 1921, is set many centuries in the future. D-503, a mathematician, lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass apartment buildings, which assist mass surveillance by the secret police, or Bureau of Guardians. People march in step with each other and are uniformed. There is no way of referring to people except by numbers assigned by the One State. The society is run strictly by logic or reason. The individual's behaviour is based on formulas and equations outlined by the One State.

As the novel opens, the spaceship Integral is being built in order to visit extraterrestrial planets. The One State intends to "force" alien races "to be happy" by accepting the absolutism of the One State and its leader, the Benefactor.

Meanwhile, as the spaceship's chief engineer, D-503 begins a journal that he intends to be carried upon the completed spaceship...